


Fragments in an Ocean

by Nymphaeus



Series: SephirothWeek 2020 [6]
Category: Compilation of Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy VII (Video Game 1997), Final Fantasy VII Remake (Video Game 2020), Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children
Genre: Character Study, Codependency, Gen, Implied Sephiroth/Cloud Strife - Freeform, Introspection, Loss of Identity, Memories, Mentioned Cloud Strife, No Plot/Plotless, POV Sephiroth (Compilation of FFVII), Sephiroth (Compilation of FFVII)-centric, Sephiroth Appreciation Week 2020, Short One Shot, The Lifestream (Compilation of FFVII)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-29
Updated: 2020-10-29
Packaged: 2021-03-08 18:35:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 726
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27271294
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nymphaeus/pseuds/Nymphaeus
Summary: Sephiroth Appreciation Week 2020 - Day 7: RebirthLost in the Lifestream's currents, Sephiroth is awaiting his inevitable return.
Series: SephirothWeek 2020 [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1982950
Kudos: 14





	Fragments in an Ocean

**Author's Note:**

> I have nothing much to say. It's a short Sephiroth introspection piece. Sometimes that's all there is to it.

Time had given up its meaning, adrift on the Lifestream’s unrelenting currents. Sephiroth had tried to hold unto it – but when weeks and days turned to hours and to minutes – and seconds collapsed into nothing but the present moment, he had to let go. Like liquid through desperately clutching fingers, it wound itself from his grasp, light and flowing, never to be caught again.

There was no longer any indication to know how long he had been fighting this battle for his continued existence, but he was far from giving it up. 

Sephiroth was patient and relentless – yet, so was his enemy.

The swirling waves of the abyss were tearing at his consciousness, his very being. Sephiroth was fighting it viciously, holding onto everything he was, what he had been, what he should be. The Lifestream was in turn fighting back in its own way, calmly and steadily, without rush, prying out pieces of him.

Ever so slowly, Sephiroth began to fray at the edges. He was lethargically torn apart while struggling to keep form, to keep a sense of his self. Spaces inside of him once occupied by a memory or a thought, were torn open into a gaping void and only for a moment would he be aware, before the space would close up, like a wound that had been ripped into his essence only to heal right over, leaving him barely more than the longing for something he couldn’t recall and the dull throbbing of some undefined loss. The Lifestream would try to seep into him through the gashes and the holes it had burned into his being, lapping at his self with acidic tongues, flowing into his deepest core to dissolve him from the inside. It was trying to erase him – since he was the disease that was to be terminated, until he was all gone and there was nothing left; the complete annihilation of what he had been.

Nothing. That was what he would become.

A disease. That was what he was. A virus, which had already spread through its host. His cells – his mother’s cells – had infected the planet, corrupted it. The Lifestream was fighting a losing war. Until it had rid itself of every last shred of him, he would always find a way to return.

Merely a fraction of himself, that was all that needed to remain.

For he had planted his essence inside another.

As long as his memory remained, so would he.

Sephiroth had woven himself so delicately into Cloud’s being, no one would be able to untangle the threads. He would not be forgotten; he could not be. Cloud was leading him back, would always lead him back, if he only followed the string that tied them to one another.

These threads he had spun would be his guide through the endless rush of images, of memories, of lives and souls, and instances and moments of condensed time that all existed at once in the Lifestream. All the missing fragments, Cloud would put them back together, weave the fabric of his being anew, to make him whole again, make him better – make him into something more.

There was something thrilling about only existing as another remembered him, to be thus defined by another, having to vanquish control to eventually seize it – Ah. But Cloud remembered him so exquisitely. A memory forged in hate – it was the most precious thing he possessed. The form he took in the depths of Cloud’s unconscious – powerful, dangerous, sublime – was perfection in its truest sense. 

Losing the hazy boundary of the self – abject and other – for it be given new shape, to be reimagined and refined in the image Cloud held in his memories and become its only truth. There was a joy to be found in that – foreign and familiar and filling him with a sense of exhilaration, only enhanced by his limited existence as pure will in the Lifestream. 

Every feeling, every fleeting thought intensified to a cacophonous echo in the limits of his fraying self, drowning out the other indistinct voices of those lost in the Lifestream’s boundless tides. His existence was screaming louder than any of them, fighting to be preserved by any means necessary, so he could reemerge – free – to walk the planet’s surface once more and assert his rightful place.  
Everything would be his.

**Author's Note:**

> And thus concludes Sephiroth Week 2020 for me!  
> I had a lot of fun doing these. ^^
> 
> A big Thank you to everyone who has been reading my stuff over the past week and I'm just really motivated to go out and write more fic.
> 
> I'm goint to continue "From Above, From Within", as I already mentioned there, even after Sephiroth Week is over and I am also working on another Sefikura-longfic, but I don't expect this to see the light of day before January/February.
> 
> Kudos, Comments, Feedback - always appreciated, but no pressure!
> 
> I have a Twitter @FL3ANC3, where I usually hang out. Come and say hi, if you like.


End file.
